April 1st. Dr. Samuel George Morton, of Philadelphia, who is preparing a comprehensive work on aboriginal crania, writes:--"Your obliging letter, offering me any information you might possess that would promote my work on the skulls of the American tribes, makes me free to put to you the following inquiries, inasmuch as I am desirous of seeing as many tribes, and as many individuals as possible, in a limited space of time.
"When will the next annual payment be made at Mackinaw, and how many tribes, and what number of people do you think will assemble on that occasion?
"If I visit Mackinaw, can I readily cross the country to the Mississippi, and what length of time will be required on the journey?
"It is my intention to visit Mackinaw, or any adjacent place, that, in your judgment, will give me the greatest opportunity for seeing the Indians, and I shall await your advice thereon.
"My work progresses rapidly. Twenty of sixty plates are already finished, and I hope to complete the work before the close of the year. I shall soon have an opportunity of forwarding, as far as Detroit, a set of my plates for your inspection and acceptance."
10th. Washington Irving writes: "I have to acknowledge the receipt of a letter informing me of my having been elected an honorary member of the Michigan Historical Society, of which, I perceive, you are President. Not being able to make out the name of the Corresponding Secretary, I have to ask the favor of you to assure the Society of the deep sense I entertain of the honor they have done me, and my ready disposition to promote the views of so meritorious an institution." What is worthy of note herein is this, that the name which the distinguished writer could not make out, is that of one of our most fluent penmen, namely, C.C. Trowbridge, Esq., but who, on scrutiny, I perceive, writes his name worse than anything else, and so inconceivably bad that a stranger might not be able to guess it.
16th. Mr. John T. Blois, who is engaged on a Gazetteer of the State of Michigan, acknowledges the receipt from me of some details respecting the statistical and topographical departments of his work. The difficulty to be met with by all gazetteers of the new States, consists in this, that most classes of the data alter so much in a few years that the books do not present the true state of things. Towns and counties spring up like magic, and if old Aladdin had his lamp he could not more expeditiously cover the shores of streams, and valleys, and plains, with seats, mills, and various institutions belonging to our system.[85]
[85] This was proved by the result. The work was published in Oct., 1838, and was a very creditable performance, but the author had been two or three or even four years about it, and the information was just this time out of date.
19th. A memorial is got up in Ionia County, on Grand River, respecting the Indians, their feelings and their affairs. In it facts are distorted, opinions misapprehended, and the acts and policy of the government and its agents greatly misconceived in some things, and wholly misrepresented in others. And the paper, when examined by the lights of treaties and acts, as they really occurred, is to be regarded as the work of some ambitious man who wishes to get on the backs of the Indians to ride into office, or to promote, in some other way, selfish and concealed ends. All such attempts, though they may seem to "run well" for a time, and may result in temporary success, may be safely left to the counteraction of right opinions. For it has always remained an axiom of truth, verified by every day's experience, "That he that diggeth a pit for his neighbor shall himself fall into it."
20th. General Jo. M. Brown, of the militia, who with the valor of the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant at Christina, marched into Toledo, "brimful of wrath and cabbage," transmits the above precious memorial, not to the Department, or the President, to whom it is ostensibly addressed, but to the editor of a political party paper at Detroit, to "manufacture" public opinion, claiming, at the same time, very high motives for so very disinterested an act, in which the good of the Indians, and the integrity of public faith, are clearly held forth as the aim of the writer. The editor endorsing it with most high-sounding phrases, in which he speaks of it as taking fit place beside the most atrocious fictions, which have been conjured up by mistaken heads and zealous hearts, anxious to ride the aforesaid "Indian question," in relation to the Cherokees and Florida Indians. When all this grandiloquent display of parental sympathy, and a sense of outraged justice, is stripped of its false garbs and put into the crucible of truth, the result is, that political capital can be made just now of the handling of the topic. A delay of a few months (owing to the fiscal crisis at Washington) in the payment of half the annuity for the year, and the neglect or refusal of a few bands to come for the other moiety, as ready in silver, and paid at the stipulated time and place, is made the subject of allusion in this political hue and cry. As to these bands, they are the most peaceable, corn-planting, and semi-agricultural bands in the State. They have been pre-eminently cultivators from an early date of their history, and have been so characteristically addicted to barter, in the products of their industry as to be called by the other Algonquin bands, Ottawas, or traders from the days of Champlain. They had probably as little to do with the Glass murder in Ionia, which is alleged as an instance of hostility to the United States, as Gen. Jo. M. Brown himself.